Playwright: Music by Mitch Leigh, lyrics by Joe Darion, book by Dale Wasserman. At: Theo Ubique at the No Exit Cafe, 6970 N. Glenwood . Phone: 800-595-4849; $25-$53. Runs through: Nov. 22
Danielle Brothers can instill a torch song with the sorrow of the world and belt with the fervor of a tempest. Inarguably, she has the vocal technique and the emotive talent to make music resonate. But in the title role of David Heimann's revisionist Man of La Mancha, Brothers is fighting with a score that's an octave or so below her natural register. Both the actress and the score lose. She's a woman playing a traditionally male role but the problem isn't one of gender, it's one of vocals.
As an actor, she's perfectly credible as the Knight of the Woeful Countenance. But the part requires a voice that can send songs Mitch Leigh's music soaring to anthemic heights. For Brothers, such musical flight is an impossible dreamor, at least, it is in this key. The musical's gorgeous scorewhich includes such instantly recognizable tunes as "The Man of La Mancha," "Dulcinea" and "The Impossible Dream"becomes a casualty of guttural low notes. The effect is akin to that of having a man perform a traditionally female role in the airiest of falsettos; the vocalizing doesn't help build the characterit detracts from it.
Making his directorial debut with Theo Ubique, Heimann does more than tinker with gender expectations in Man of La Mancha. He also dispenses with the traditional setting ( a prison during the Spanish Inquisition ) and puts the whole story in a contemporary mental hospitalor, rather, the One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest-circa-1970s stereotype of a contemporary mental hospital. The patients are tired, tiresome tropes straight out of central casting. They pick obsessively at imaginary nits, twist their faces with exaggerated facial tics and babble to themselves and their imaginary friends throughout. In all, there's not a single ensemble member who doesn't pull repeatedly focus with labored, overwrought depictions of cartoon crazy. It's like watching a room full of bad Marty Feldman impersonators doing impressions of Young Frankenstein's Igor.
If the ensemble's collective performances were rooted in truth rather than mugging, the concept could work. When Miguel Cervantes is committed to the asylum, it makes sense. He believes himself to be someone he is not. He thinks windmills are dragons. Clearly, he's delusional. Heimann deserves credit for imagination and verve. If only he'd reigned in the Looney Tunes schtick and cast a Don Quixote with the requisite vocal prowess.
However, despite those major drawbacks, there are definite pleasures in Man of La Mancha. Daniel Waters Padre and Kent L. Joseph's Pedro deliver marvelous vocals on ( respectively ) "To Each His Dulcinea" and the "Little Bird, Little Bird." Moreover, Ryan Brewster's four-man band captures the intricate emotions of the score with minimalist grace.